Movie review: Sloppy script poisons 'Venom'

Dana Barbuto The Patriot Ledger

Friday

Oct 5, 2018 at 6:36 AM

“Venom” is a hot train wreck … and by hot I mean Tom Hardy in the lead role. You just cannot look away even though the movie is a disaster, zipping from one plot point to the next with zero logic or character development amid a plethora of contrivances. The CGI is even amateurish. All you want to do is watch Hardy go back-and-forth with the alien “symbiote” Venom, inhabiting his body. The movie is fun when the script focuses on body-takeover buddy comedy, as Eddie Brock (Hardy) and Venom (also Hardy in heavily synthesized voice) exchange insults (“On my planet I’m kind of a loser, like you.”) like frat boys and dole out vigilante justice.

An origin story, “Venom” is not-so-fun when the tried-and-true super-hero film narrative takes over. You know the one. It has some object or person that everyone wants or is affected by (in this case it’s the shapeless black ooze found in space in the movie’s opening). Then there’s also the “girlfriend,” an underwhelming villain, and a couple of big battles. Throw in some internal struggle and a final showdown and viola!

Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a disgraced Bay Area investigative TV journalist once beloved for taking down nefarious corporate types. His latest assignment is a puff piece on Carlton Drake (think: Elon Musk), scientist and founder of the bio-tech corporation, The Life Foundation. Coincidentally, Eddie’s fiancée Anne (Michelle Williams, slumming) is an attorney whose law firm represents Drake (not the rapper!). Eddie steals confidential information off her laptop and confronts Drake during their interview. Gotcha! But Eddie doesn’t get the last laugh. Cut to the next scene that shows Eddie being fired and the one after that, which shows Anne dumping his “selfish” butt.

Enter Dr. Dora Skirth (played by Milton’s Jenny Slate). Skirth, a scientist-turned-whistleblower reveals that Drake is doing harmful experiments, mixing the alien symbiotes (which look like globs of slime) with humans. And, he’s using poor, homeless people as his guinea pigs. An outraged Eddie tags along to the lab with Skirth. He snoops around while she diverts security. Naturally, Eddie goes in too deep and an alien symbiote transfers onto his body.

Hardy, an Oscar-nominee for "The Revenant,” is amusing to watch as Eddie discovers his new powers: superhuman strength, self-healing, super speed, agility and jumping. No one will ever say that Hardy doesn’t go all in. He is the only reason to see this movie. The rest of the cast is phoning it in, bored by their own performances. But not Hardy, he’s just intense, especially in the physical scenes when Venom takes over control of Eddie’s arms, legs and transforms him into a slimey hulking monster of gnashing teeth and an enormous tongue dripping with saliva. Unfortunately, Venom needs live meat to survive and when he’s not biting off human heads or feasting on lobsters in a restaurant tank, he is basically eating Eddie from the inside out. Confused and scared, Eddie teams up with Anne and her new boyfriend (Reid Scott), a doctor, to figure out what’s happening. Ultimately, Eddie has to stop Drake from executing his plans that would change humanity as we know it.

The character of Venom is not the nemesis he was when last seen as Spidey’s foe in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3.” Director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”), working from a script credited to four writers, re-fashions the character as moderately heroic. “We only kill bad people,” Eddie reminds his “parasite” pal.

This Venom is not the nemesis he was when last seen as Spidey’s foe in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3.” Director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”), working from a script credited to four writers, re-fashions the character as moderately heroic. “We only kill bad people,” Eddie reminds his “parasite” pal.

To be clear: this movie is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Don’t let that Stan Lee cameo fool you. Nothing that happens in “Venom” has any relationship to the “Avengers” or even the most recent “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” It’s a stand-alone movie and one that will likely spawn a sequel, seeing as a certain A-list actor shows up post-credits to tease what I guess is something huge, given the reaction of the erudite audience.

Dana Barbuto may be reached at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.